The limitations of climate change donor intervention as deus ex machina : evidence from Sorsogon, the Philippines

This study reviews the empirical context of a relatively recent UN-sponsored infusion of climate change-related knowledge and skills for local development in Sorsogon City, in the Bicol region of the Philippines. While recognising the significant positive impacts of such targeted, pro-poor international aid, it points out that the diffusion of benefits is gradual at best, owing to the limitations of sociocultural context, administrative structures and the confounding influence of endemic practices of resilience. Enthusiasm for such developmental aid, often coveted by impoverished localities in the Global South, should be tempered by scholarly realisations on both sides that such grants, especially if they try to localise a phenomenon as complex as global environmental change, are fleeting over the long run, and therefore their advantages must be capitalised on quickly and learned well if these are to be passed on and multiplied at the grassroots.